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Terre haute

Hello guys ! Been a long time !

Here is a map I drawn in the process of creating a new fantasy world I intend to use in several projects I have. It's purely pen & paper for now and I hesitate about which way to take it : sticking to p&p or going digital, if so what style to use,...

So I thought I'd let you see it and comment/criticize it. Maybe it'll help me make the best choices possible...

The world is an island called Haute-Terre (High-Land) which is rather small (about 300 km from west to east and the same from north to south). It has four major human cities plus a dwarven underground city, a few towns, two major mountain masses and two major forests.

Looks great! Your symbols mesh well together and it's interesting terrain. The only real problem I see is that you have a river that splits at Two Rivers; If that actually happened one branch would die as the other opened.

I read the topic about realistic rivers features a while ago, and I thought about it while drawing the map.

The split river is in fact caused by a terrain feature, called Racine-des-Monts (Mountains' root) which is located just south of the town of Deux-Rivières. It looks the same way that sometimes a tree's root comes over the ground, except it's a huge rock. This is why it's called that way. I guess that, since water always uses the easiest way, it would be logical that river would split there, since the landscape there is mostly soft ground. To the north, the town of Deux-Rivières is located on a plateau largely made of shale that ends in high cliffs at the sea, so there is no way for the two parts of the river to join again before the sea.

I know this kind of feature doesn't really exist in our world, but I thought it might be pretty logical... don't know what you think of it...

It isn't really surprising, though. I chose pretty logical places names, closely related to the landmarks... What is most surprising is to find that place in Indiana. I would have expected it to be in Quebec or something ^^

I was born in the city of Terre Haute, Indiana, though have only been there a few times since. Korrigan, french history is pretty heavy in the region, especially Illinois (where I now live) from French colony days in the late 1600's and early 1700's. So I too was surprised to see your fantasy isle named the same.